Identifier: inmorocco00wharuoft (find matches)
Title: In Morocco
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937
Subjects: Morocco -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York Scribner
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Orientals, an in-vincible repugnance to repairing and restoring, andone after another the frail exposed Arab structures,with their open courts and badly constructedterrace-roofs, are crumbling into ruin. Happily theFrench Government has at last been asked to in-tervene, and all over Morocco the Medersas arebeing repaired with skill and discretion. That ofthe Oudayas is already completely restored, andas it had long fallen into disuse it has been trans-formed by the Ministry of Fine Arts into a museumof Moroccan art. The plan of the Medersas is always much thesame: the eternal plan of the Arab house, builtabout one or more arcaded courts, with long nar-row rooms enclosing them on the ground floor, andseveral stories above, reached by narrow stairs, andoften opening on finely carved cedar galleries.The chief difference between the Medersa and theprivate house, or even the fondak,* lies in the use towhich the rooms are put. In the Medersas, one * The Moroccan inn or caravanserai. ( 20 )
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RABAT AND SALfi of the ground-floor apartments is always fitted upas a chapel, and shut off from the court by carvedcedar doors still often touched with old gilding andvermilion. There are always a few students pray-ing in the chapel, while others sit in the doors ofthe upper rooms, their books on their knees, orlean over the carved galleries chatting with theircompanions w^ho are washing their feet at the marblefountain in the court, preparatory to entering thechapel. In the Medersa of the Oudayas, these nativeactivities have been replaced by the lifeless hushof a museum. The rooms are furnished with oldrugs, pottery, brasses, the curious embroideredhangings which line the tents of the chiefs, andother specimens of Arab art. One room repro-duces a barbers shop in the bazaar, its benchescovered with fine matting, the hanging mirror in-laid with mother-of-pearl, the razor-handles ofsilver niello. The horseshoe arches of the outergallery look out on orange-blossoms, roses and thesea. It

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